True Husband
by LycoRogue
Summary: It would keep the Speaker for the Dead 22yrs to reach Lusitania, but that doesn't mean life stops and waits. Novinha got herself into a lot of chaos during a wait for a man she didn't even know would show up, but the real trial was how she handled her day to day life. ***SPOILER TO SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD*** ***Novinha x Libo***


****A/N: SPOILER ALERT FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T FINISHED "SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD"****

 ****Oddly enough I was inspired to write this while reading "Xenocide" in the Ender Saga, but Novinha and her personal struggle really stuck with me, and so I had to pause and backtrack to those 22yrs between her calling for a Speaker for the Dead, and his arrival.****

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Novinha's eyes stung as she turned on the shower. She kept her sobs locked in a knot that was burning her throat. She wasn't going to cry. She didn't deserve the release of crying. She caught a glance of herself in the mirror as she waited for the water to warm up. She was still naked from her lovemaking with Marcão. No. Not lovemaking. Never lovemaking, that would imply that she loved him. That would mean that she cared for him, instead of pitied him, tolerated him. How could she ever love him? He was her captor, her jailer, her punisher, but then again, she was his willing prisoner. In fact, it was Novinha that handed him the key in the first place. Lock me in tight, Cão, she had thought, lock me away so I can't harm any more people. Yet there she was, doing precisely that. Hurting nearly everyone she touched. Her prison never truly confined her, truly isolated her, truly guaranteed her the way she needed it. Her four children were proof of that. Wisps of freedom, love, and hope still managed to creep in, only to be suffocated by the miasma her life secreted.

She'd be strong. She'd endure. She was as cold and tough as stone, and would silently allow herself to be worn away by the elements. Worn away by the dying sweetness that collapsed around her. Stones did not weep. Stones accepted their fates and let themselves be washed away until they were little more than sand. Maybe as sand she could bear her life.

In the meantime, this pain was her penance. This was God balancing the scales. Her parents were good, they were literal saints, the great Os Venerados who stopped the deadly descolada virus and saved the town of Milagre. For God to have sent two holy people to one place at the same time, He had to keep life in balance somehow, and so all their destruction, all their evil, all their filth was gifted to their daughter Novinha. Their orphan, their pariah, their murderer, their adulteress, their heathen, their own plague on Milagre to replace the one they stopped.

Her sin was living, and her cross was knowing that nothing with any goodness could last long around her. She was fine with that, or so she tried to convince herself daily. She made life crumble around her, and so she deserved this misery, this prison. If only Marcão were better at his job, then maybe her spirit could finally be broken, as she deserved.

Instead, here she was in her shower, scrubbing away at her filthy, naked body after sharing her husband's bed. The burn in her throat spread to her jaw, still, she welcomed the pain and kept them both clenched tight. The very act of giving herself to that brute Marcão was proof that she deserved every misery, since she unwittingly dulled misery out so easily.

She was an adulteress, although no one knew the truth. Only Marcão, and maybe Libo. Sweet, handsome, calming, strong Libo. Did he know? Did he truly understand how unfaithful she was? No one else would blame Novinha for laying with Marcão. In the eyes of the church he was her husband, but Libo and Novinha knew better. In Novinha's heart Libo was her true husband, and has been so since the evening after Libo's father was killed. No. Sooner. Novinha, Libo, and his father Pipo were a family years before that. When exactly did Novinha see Libo as her husband instead of her surrogate brother? It didn't matter. She cheated on him tonight when she let Marcão take her, and she had done so hundreds of times over the past decade.

What did it matter, though? Hasn't he done the same thing? Didn't his daughters prove that he was an adulterer as well? Wasn't Libo laying with his lawful wife right now? Worse yet, didn't he consider her his true wife? Wasn't that why Novinha gave her body to Marcão earlier? She gave up scrubbing the filth off of herself. Instead she let the water hit her face and cascade down her; the tears finally spilled.

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 ****A/N: This ended up a lot shorter than intended. I have a whole mini-epic, but I ran out of time to continue writing this. I'm going to try to finish my train of thought with this story and then update this. Please, keep your eyes open for that.****


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